Archive for June 17th, 2008

Glenn Greenwald has this truly disgusting example of why the House leadership needs to be replaced:

It is now definitively clear that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is the driving force behind a bill — written by GOP Sen. Kit Bond — to vest the President with vast new warrantless eavesdropping powers and to vest lawbreaking telecoms with amnesty. Even as his office dishonestly denies that he is doing so, still more reports yesterday — this one from the NYT and this one from Roll Call (sub req’d) — confirm that a so-called “compromise” is being spearheaded by Hoyer and the House Democratic leadership. The ACLU and EFF are holding a joint call tomorrow to denounce Hoyer’s “compromise” as nothing more than disguised guaranteed immunity for telecoms and, further, because “the proposed deal could be used to authorize dragnet surveillance of Americans’ communications in violation of the Fourth Amendment.”

Motives are always hard to know, especially with barren Beltway politicians, so I’ll just pass on what seems to be the consensus among the Washington people I talk to about this:

They think that, come August, when the PAA orders expire, the GOP is going to have a club to beat them with as they go to their convention to nominate Obama (“The Democrats are leaving us vulnerable to the Terrorists”). Since Obama is against telecom amnesty and warrantless eavesdropping, they think it’s necessary to take that issue off the table, hence the “compromise.”

A Clinton insider told CQ: “Translated subtitles aren’t necessary. There is no other way to interpret this other than ‘[Expletive] you.'”

Yeah, yeah, so this is inside-baseball stuff, right? Not really. If PSD is Obama’s czarina of Vice Presidential Nominee, then guess who probably isn’t going to get the nod? Uh-huh. And some of Hillary’s peeps are p.o’d. Like San Francisco’s own Susie Tompkins Buell. She told the Washington
Post:

“It’s a slap in the face,” Buell said. “Why would they put somebody that was so clearly ineffective in such a position? It’s a message. We get it.”

She said it was a “calculated decision” by the Obama team to “send a message that she [Clinton] is not being considered for the ticket.”